Saturday, 19 April 2008

When I first went to Japan 2yrs ago my trousers were sized between 34 and 36inches and they were a decent fit. The Japanese staple of ramen and riceballs meant that over the next 2yrs, my waistband went veerrrrrry gradually to a slightly less husky 32/34inches.

Didn't really notice it, just meant I had to pull my belts a lil tighter, but I could still wear the same jeans and trousers I always wore.

Then I went back to England for a month... hehe! The homecooked meals, the epic family dinners, the constant berating of "Waahhh! You've gone too skinny! Eat more! Eat more la!!!" from my brilliant family. A month is all it took to get me back to my healthy glowy 35inches for Taiwan. (^^)

What I didn't expect was how much more active my life here would be..: at least one clubnight every weekend (a bit more than I'm used to, but not too surprising), an hour at the gym every weeknight after work (still OMGWTFBBQROFFLEROFFLEO_o surprising. Seriously. Its weird). Suddenly my trousers are beginning to look like something out of a Weight Watchers advert. Eek.

And therein lies the dilemma: Knowing how much my belly likes its food, and not knowing whether this fitness malarky is just a phase or something I'll be able to keep doing for a while yet - Do I now buy 30/32inch trousers at the risk of popping the buttons in a few months, or do I stick with me 34inchers and carry on folding the waistband over like I'm still wearing hand-me-downs from my mum?

Talk about a question that I never would've expected I'd have to ask myself... Heh. (O_o)

Monday, 14 April 2008

While it's definitely true that quality tunes seems to be more and more rare nowadays, it could also be said that we don't give whats out there much of a chance anymore either. Music is infinitely more disposable now with multi-gig mp3 players and the ease and availability of the mp3's themselves - if we don't like a song or if it doesn't grab us right away, then we (or at least I do anyways) delete it off and never think about it again.

Back in the day before mp3's and even burnable CD's we had tapes and CD's and were pretty much stuck with whatever crap they put on the albums and singles. But the funny thing is, a lot of the crap out there had the tendancy to grow on you the more you listen to them. I wonder how many cocooned tracks I'd skipped out on over the years coz I just coz I didn't like the intro or I found the beat initially annoying... Meh.

When CD-R's and MD's came out - we began to have more control over what we could easily take with us in a hurry on the move. Yet we were still limited to 74mins of actual track time. Ya know what? I actually miss this limitation.

Being able to carry your entire music collection with you is a nice thought - but for me - I find I spend too much time trying to find the right track for the moment, while in the past, I'd let the track set the moment for me.

Plus, building a truly great compilation mix is an art form.High Fidelity is a great film in its own right, but I always remember it coz of the truth it says about mix tapes; Start with something noticable, sometimes take it up a notch, but not too much, sometimes cool it down a notch, but not too much, there're a lot of rules. It takes a lot of thought. More than you might expect.

The great thing is, you actually tend to treasure the songs more.

I think I used to be pretty good at making compilation MD's... at least I and the people who rode in my car used to think so anyways...

One of my favourite types of compilations were cruisy chillout collections. I wonder if I can still do it...

Thursday, 3 April 2008

Strolling through my old xanga rambles, I'd forgotten that I had actually uploaded some pretty nifty albums over the years. For example, even though I have this pic on my phone - seeing it again in hi-res really hits home that I was really there, on Mount Fuji, at 4am and getting to the summit just in time to meet sunrise.

But it was a moment 2hrs before we reached the top, where I took one of my most favourite pics ever - with a 30sec exposure time and flare threatening from the moon - it's one of the few pics I have that I never needed to touch with Photoshop. Bar the resize.

I'm might have to re-upload some of these to facebook, coz there were some amazing moments tucked away here and there.